Insurance Company

The Client

Turkey’s largest insurance company, providing the full range of policies from a network of regional offices.

The Challenge

The drivers - due to a historic relationship, the insurance company client relies upon a bank customer to provide a significant proportion of business. An audit undertaken by the bank had stipulated a requirement for effective business continuity plans to be developed. There was also an increasing realisation within senior management that the company was exposed to not being able to maintain claims payments and customer services in the event of a serious incident.

The threats – the insurance company relied upon a single data centre facility to provide all key IT services to clients and regional offices. A single incident could cause services to be disrupted for many weeks. The data centre, head office and several regional offices were located within an earthquake zone where a severe earthquake is predicted to happen at some point during the next 20 years.

The benefits – this is the largest insurance company in the country and it was recognised that being able to maintain customer services would ensure that reputation and market share would be protected.

The Solution

A business continuity project was managed through all phases, i.e. business impact analysis, strategy development, plan development, exercising and training.

Representatives from each business area and technology were involved and “buy in” at senior management was achieved through their involvement during each phase of the project.

The Result

An appropriate incident management structure was defined and solutions implemented that would ensure claims payment and customer services could continue even in the event of the most extreme circumstances, such as a regional earthquake.

Despite business continuity management not being a recognised discipline within Turkey, senior managers and underwriters are now convinced of the benefits to both their organisation and their commercial clients.